Imagine there is no math!

Was it in an episode of Star Trek, or was it The Twilight Zone, in which aliens were plants?  If only I were a science fiction junkie; I would then have retained this earth-shattering (get it?) detail!

Aliens don't have to be like us at all.  Their shapes and sizes could easily be beyond our wildest imaginations.  It is like that fourth-dimension that Carl Sagan sketched out a long time ago: As much as two-dimensional "people" would have no way of imagining the three-dimensions of ours, we might be incapable of understanding four dimensions, or sixteen for that matter!

Which is why there is nothing about the "natural" numbers that we are taught in math:

Counting “only exists where you have stones, trees, people—individual, countable things,” he says. “Why should that be any more fundamental than, say, the mathematics of fluids?” If intelligent creatures were found living within, say, the clouds of Jupiter’s atmosphere, they might have no intuition at all for counting, or for the natural numbers

That excerpt is from an essay that asks: What, exactly, is math? Is it invented, or discovered?

When they teach math, they don't make us think about these things, right?  They simply march us on through numbers, multiplication tables, fractions, angles, calculus, ... 

Instead, imagine if they asked kids in, say, the third grade whether aliens would do the same math that we do.  If aliens and their kids do not have fingers and toes, then will their counting and numbers be different?  Why don't they spark imagination and creativity in children, even as they teach numbers and multiplication tables?

The older I get, the more I value imagination and creativity.  We seem to systematically kill it.

Remember this from not too long ago?

We need to rethink the way we teach our children and the things we teach them. Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent. Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning. It’s the one thing machines won’t be able to do. We should aim to teach our kids about the power of creativity in every area.

I know I am ranting. I am getting old, I guess.  So, I will wrap up ;)